


not the way the world ends

by deepandlovelydark



Series: count to ten and run for cover (B-sides) [5]
Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Comfort Sex, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Laughter, Oranges, Post-Apocalypse, cosy catastrophe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:30:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: in which there is a stubborn refusal to specify, just what apocalypse has befallen the survivorsbesides this one: Blondie's gone





	not the way the world ends

**Author's Note:**

> ...if this were part of main canon, it would be a solid decade at least after the events of "Bleeding".

_“Terminat hora diem-_ what utter nonsense I’m spouting. A pet affectation, at best.” Talking to fill the void has never been my art; but our resident expert has abandoned the attempt. His face turned towards the chapel wall, prayer beads slipping through his fingers. Quite dead to the world. 

Perhaps Tuco’s only being reasonable, when the world’s gone so mad as this. I defied the laws of society, true; but I never thought to see them so madly cast aside.

“In days of peace, perhaps it was,” Father Paul says, gripping my shoulder with his sun-browned hand. His face has never acquired laugh lines like his brother’s; but that harsh look seems only fitting now. “But these are not the first bad times the church has seen- we’ve learned how necessary it always is, to salvage after disaster. For the sake of mind as well as spirit. Your Latin is a treasure to be shared out, not forgotten.”

“Just the same as your Spanish, in that case.” Tuco will never press the point, so I must perforce. 

I don’t expect him to take it well, but the man’s a stoic after the best. Not a swallow, not a flicker of self-regard. “You’re right. Though it’s been a long time, since I was Pablo Ramirez.”

“I’ll help you,” Tuco says eagerly, distracted from his empathy; and for that one bright look of eagerness, I think our resident prior would have made a harder sacrifice.

I would have done myself, if the chance was there. But Tuco’s known long since that I’d die readily enough to protect him from my errors.

And considering what we’ve already lost? What else is there to give?

******

“I knew before you told me,” Tuco says that night. Holding fast to me with more strength than wit. 

A fragile lovemaking, this, and not properly deserving the name at all- nothing lofty and transformative, neither is it forgetful and cheerfully animal. My  _pareja_ has been talking incessantly now he’s found his voice again, proving his humanity every minute; and it is not how this should be but nothing is now.

“You heard it on the radio?” I’d been with Pablo when the news had come through, a lazily meaningless game of backgammon.

(Was this how superstitions began, in past centuries? For I can’t envision touching a backgammon board again with any pleasure.)

“No- no. I woke up from my siesta, and I saw Blondie standing by the window, smoking a cigarillo. He said to me, it’s finished. That’s all, but the way he said it! So much sadness in his voice… I hid beneath the covers. Then he was gone when I looked again.”

“You know he isn’t here, Tuco.” Fancy’s fancy, but fact is fact. Blondie’s not coming back this time. Won’t again walk through that door, covered in mud and exhausted from his camping trip, patiently resigned to Tuco’s lavish coddling and my own amused pleasure at his reappearance. 

If I had kept up my old trade, all those contacts and lethal information at my fingertips, would he be alive now? Most likely not. An earlier grave for all us three, if I’m being honest with myself.

I wish to lie. I wish to berate myself with absurd scenarios in which we lived, whatever improbable unmarked path would have kept the three of us together. Now, that’s hardly more sensible-

“If I’d gone to him, maybe he’d be here,” Tuco says hoarsely, a dry sob sticking in his throat. “If I’d taken Blondie by the hand, if I hadn’t turned away-”

Thank a god I don’t believe in, that  _one_ of us is rational. “That’s nonsense and you know it.”

“I believe in miracles- Angel, do you know what a hellish thing it is, to believe? To think that if you’d only been holier, your faith might have been enough-”

he struggles with me then, roughly pushing his way out of my grasp, and I don’t dare stop him; it takes all my effort to keep old instincts from rising up. I might hurt him to the quick, if he caught me by surprise; and Tuco knows that well.

(That his native caution has so far deserted him, that’s a worse hurt than all the rest together. The world burning is its own affair; but my  _pareja_ is irreplaceable.)

(The more so, because Blondie wasn’t either.)

“I hate- I hate-” he’s crying now, at the foot of the bed; and it wrings my heart with a strange relief. He’ll be far more himself after such an outpouring, those quick sympathies and sudden rages of his.  

“That’s fair. Don’t berate yourself for that.”

“I hate how  _hungry_ I am.” 

Rather the non-sequitur: but that’s easily remedied. It’s only a moment’s work to step into the kitchen and pluck out a round, perfect orange. Listening all the time, if he should attempt something unfortunate in my absence.

But he’s not moved at all when I come back. Limp fingers won’t hold the offered sphere; I take it back, contemplating how to peel it. There’s a knife conveniently to hand, in the pocket of my neatly folded trousers.

I don’t think I could bring myself to commit even so small a violence, in Tuco’s presence. Not today. Better to take a cue from my  _innamorato,_ and tear it with my teeth- tough and rather bitter work, but doable-

Tuco’s fit looks more like a seizure than giggling; but giggling it nevertheless is. He sprawls across the quilts, close enough to touch again; I refrain until the spasming’s stopped. Then stroke him with slow careful movements, the oil from my hands transferring to his flesh, staining him wherever I touch.

“Oh, Angel, don’t- don’t try to be him. It wouldn’t ever work.”

“That’s not what I-”

“It was a little.”

He hands me the knife; I finish quickly, putting aside the ravaged peel. Orange segments neat and unbroken, the way that Tuco prefers them. They sit on the bed untouched.

“It occurs to me. That fruit bowl might hold the last oranges either of us will ever see.”

“Yeah, I thought of that too.”

For all his claim of appetite, his look at the fruit is uninterested at best. There’s more light in his eye when it falls on my body, still naked as his own- it’s very cold, this late. I draw the bedclothes over us, grasping for his warmth. We should have Blondie for this; and that small loss is a banality of almost unimaginable pettiness, but that does nothing to stop the odd tear dropping into Tuco’s curls.

“I mean I want to eat something, my belly’s empty. You’re here and I want to fuck you, and I want- I should be in mourning, shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t my heart be broken?”

My only comparable experience would be with my mentor; and she’d left such clear and precise instructions, a rigorous schedule to maintain, that I was left with no blank time for grieving. Blondie would never be so organised, as to provide a forthright message-

“If you have a joke, Angel, I think I could stand to hear it.”

“…it certainly would be ironic, if he’d won his wings for the sole purpose of consoling you.” There will be better times to point out the probability of his dreaming the whole incident. Not tonight. 

Tuco doesn’t laugh. He snorts.

“As though my partner was a saint- ha. No, he was human like me, and I’m glad of that too! You should have some of this orange, Angel, I think you’re getting light headed.”

“All right.” I sit up against the headboard, pull him upright with me. Carefully detach a single delicate segment with my bare hands, pop one end of it into my mouth. Palpitate it delicately to squeeze out the juice. 

“You make that look pretty sexy…” 

“Come and get it, then.”

The following could be described only as a mess.

Orange over the quilt, on my thigh, crushed against my teeth. A chunk of peel lodged jauntily behind Tuco’s ear, while juice drips down his mustache; he licks at it contentedly.

There’s waste to this, an extravagance that would seem rather contemptible to my mentor- and if she’d ever thought to mention what to do in case of apocalypse, I might have better notions, but the thought really hadn’t occurred. This time is already more grace than I’d know what to do with.

But I have not lain with my lovers for so many years, without letting their appreciation of softness bind to my sharp awareness of every moment. If he’s all I have left, I’ll have him and kiss him again-

(why, there won’t be any need to translate Spanish in bed, now-)

“God above, I’m glad to see this. Been scared to hell about you two.”

“…that’s Blondie, isn’t it?” Tuco remarks. Not turning his head. 

“It is.”

“So he’s definitely there, it’s not just me.”

“Right.”

“But he wasn’t here this afternoon.”

“No?” Blondie says, looking quizzical. “I was still with Penny- it’s a lucky thing she had the plane all fueled up, we made it here on fumes. Or not even that, we kinda…crashed, actually. Not too badly. She’s clever that way.”

“Is all well?” If I allowed a bagatelle like being caught  _in flagrante_ with orange rind in my hair, by a man who has no business being anything but a ghost, to put me off my poise…it’d be a rather poor show. 

“Sure! Sure. She’s waiting for me to come back with the van, so we can lug all the cargo back here. I’ll have to talk to Father Paul about that, but I needed to see you two safe first- oof!” 

“I think I must be a terrible person,” Tuco says musingly, while I’m preoccupied with rediscovering every angle of my  _innamorato’s_ anatomy. Each familiar, and yet new as sunrise-

“Why?” we both chorus. 

“That cargo- I guess we get to keep it, yeah?”

“Uh-huh,” Blondie agrees, between breathless kisses. (His rasping stubble is paining me, where the citric acid stings, and I would not trade the sensation for anything.) “What about it? I thought you’d be happy.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If I have you two…what kind of catastrophe is that, huh?”

“A bad one,” Blondie says mock-solemnly, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. 

“A very bad one,” I agree, taking his hand. 

“…it’s all the other people I feel bad for,” Tuco says gloomily, huddling between us. “Who aren’t lucky like me, you know? I mean, I’m the kind of person who- who gets killed in the first five minutes, that’s what, and then everybody else dies too, and it’s just- two blonds walk off to Eden in the sunset-”

“We’re not gonna let that happen,” Blondie insists. “You’re gonna make it through the same as us- aren’t we, Angel?”

It’s strange, really, that everything’s changed and yet nothing has at all.

“Of course.”

I drag the knife along my tongue, carefully cleaning it of acid. I may need it in future. Quite soon even, if there’s trouble on the road. 

But not, I think, just yet. 

Unfortunate Penny and her plane full of orange marmalade will simply have to wait.


End file.
